AFSCME union, the nation's largest and fastest growing public sector union, has tracked down a sanitation worker or trash man named Richard Hayes. Hayes just so happens to be assigned to a route in La Jolla, California where Mitt Romney's home is. The union is trying portray Hayes as "Mitt Romney's trash man" when in reality, Hayes picks up the trash for an entire neighborhood in the City of San Diego and is paid by taxpayers.
Richard Hayes is a City of San Diego sanitation worker. His route includes Mitt Romney’s street in the La Jolla, Calif., community where Romney owns a $12 million oceanfront villa.
A few things:
1. Richard Hayes isn't forced to be a sanitation worker, he chose to take the job he has. If he doesn't like it, he has the option to do something else that doesn't require picking up "Mitt Romney's trash."
2. Any person who lives in the city and not in the middle of nowhere, has a trash pickup service they pay for through taxes and a monthly bill. Having your trash picked up is not a "1 percenter" thing.
3. Hayes makes $50,000 a year, not including benefits, to do his job according to the City of San Diego.
4. It is interesting the video above doesn't actually show Hayes lifting "12 tons of trash" by "hand."
UPDATE: Remember when Mitt Romney became a trash collector for a day when he was governor of Massachusetts?
“During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts. Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant. I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile.”
“One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector. I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston. As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me. It was as if I was invisible. Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect. – I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector: at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever. Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street. Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did…” (251) [All emphasis added]
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When did Barack Obama ever pick up trash for a day as a sanitation worker? I'll wait for the answer.
H/T The Blaze and Leah Barkoukis
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